Aug 28, 2015
by MOSAIC Editorial Team
Cultural immersion experience presents surprising moments of compassion and self-understanding.
The undergraduates embark on a "cultural immersion" pilgrimage to Cuernavaca, Mexico, just south of Mexico City. For seven weeks, the men live with a Mexican family while attending intensive Spanish language class each day. When time permits, they make excursions to historical and cultural sites in the area. In the evening, priest-formators guide the seminarians in spiritual direction.
Through the Mexican cultural immersion experience, seminarians will be better prepared to minister to the spiritual needs of Latino Catholics later on when they become priests.
Second-year pre-theologian Colin Fricke gives this report about his experience this spring along with nine other brother seminarians.
"Filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus returned from the Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the desert" (Luke 4:1).
Cuernavaca, Mexico, is anything but an arid desert. Temperatures are in the eighties each day and a light rain fall most every night.
At times, however, the Cuernavaca pilgrimage was the wilderness to us ten seminarians. For example, to navigate the Mexico City airport you need a passport, an immigration form, to know some Spanish (or have taken acting classes), and to be able to finagle your way through line after wandering line of tired travelers.
Driving through the streets of Cuernavaca, walls encompass everything. But behind most walls are carefully kept gardens. The Camarillos family hosted Jeremiah Hahn and meand they welcomed us into their gardenof the home and the heart. "Humble" is how I would describe Mrs. Camarillo and "dedicated" goes to Mr. Camarillo. Yet, the linguistic wilderness of tediously translating Spanish into English and back again through charismatic charades made the joy of knowing the entire Camarillo family possible. The wilderness of an unknown language made us forage for expressions of the heart.
We seminarians searched for other gardens on our pilgrimage such as those that surround the Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary in Cuernavaca. We found ourselves praying the rosary while singing songs of praise. Peacocks even sing the praises of the Lord here!
While in the gardens we took courage, praying the Liturgy of the Hours in the open. A woman came to us crying and thanking us for braving the wilderness of fear in the face of a hostile secularized culture. Praying with her, we found the expression of the heart that discovers beauty in the person. Our journey continued inside the cathedral when Bishop Ram_n Castro Castro gave us a tour complete with parrots and peacocks.
We confronted the wilderness of our own spiritual complacency through a cab driver we encountered who returned to the Church after a youthful rebellion. Experiencing a deep change of heart while fighting through an illness, he smelled the scent of roses that led him to the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe. He became a renewed man, and his leg became healed.
Healing comes in many forms, including the healing of families and the remission of disease. After much prayer and suffering, a man we met, Jose Luis, asked for God's help in battling alcoholism and received it, and a woman, Maritsa, prayed for healing and was soon released from the hospital. On the flight back, I struck up a conversation with a devout Catholic man when I saw a prayer card lodged in one of his books. Of course, I had to be willing to battle the wilderness of less leg space on the plane because of the encounter.
"We know that all things work for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28). In the wilderness of our cultural immersion experience, we brother seminarians found unity with others while being formed in the spirit together. In every wilderness, God's grace is sufficient.
As for me, "I think I am quite ready for another adventure" Bilbo Baggins.
Colin Fricke is a second-year pre-theology seminarian for the Archdiocese of Detroit.
MOSAIC Editorial Team